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GOP Deniers Block Creation Of Climate Service
Science-averse Republicans have once again blocked the establishment of a National Climate Service by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, moving from denial of man-made climate change to the denial of climate itself. “I’m very concerned that NOAA has taken steps to form what amounts to a shadow climate service operation,” House science committee chair Ralph Hall (R-TX) cried in September. At a hearing in June, Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) blasted the budget-neutral plan to consolidate NOAA’s existing, widely dispersed, climate capabilities under a single management structure as “propaganda services.” In the committee report submitted by appropriations chair Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) for the 2012 budget, the National Climate Service is expressly forbidden:
The National Climate Service would have allowed NOAA to meet America’s rising demand for authoritative and timely climate information. Tea Party Republicans successfully included a rider preventing its establishment in the FY 2011 continuing resolution. The reorganization would have significantly boosted the agency’s efficiency, strengthen science across NOAA, and improve delivery of vital weather and climate forecasts – at no additional cost to the taxpayer.
Nothing less than the full mobilization of the nation’s resources will allow us to survive the changing threats of our polluted climate. However, the Republican Party now has a policy of science denial. The formation of this service threatens the know-nothings who deny that the fossil fuel industry is creating a dangerous world — so they are preventing the government from protecting the American people.
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20 Comments so far
Show AllThe GOP is the Party of the 1%.
And the Democrats are what?, the party of the 2%. In 2012, vote, get all of your friends and family to vote, and vote for a third party. Vote Green. Vote Libertarian. Vote Working Families. Vote for the American Communist Party, or for the Transcendental Meditation Party or for the Anti-Marijuana Party. Let's put BIG voter numbers on the wall, that we do NOT want the corruption and ignorance of the GOP and the Democrats anymore.
Hasn't the "dangerous world" already been created?
" 'I’m very concerned that NOAA has taken steps to form what amounts to a shadow climate service operation,'... Ralph Hall (R-TX) cried." He's from TEXAS?? Wow, as ye sow, so shall ye reap, I guess. Hey, Texas? Hows that harvest of tumbleweed going for ya?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCerzQdTLuc&feature=player_embedded
Of course, no one could have predicted THAT. Well, maybe NOAA, with a climate service, could have. But of what use are eyes if you have to keep them open all the time? We'll just keep our eyes closed, cuz we KNOW God won't let us walk into any walls.
For cryin' out loud, just form the damn thing as a 501c3 by people smart enough to understand what the hell needs to be done. WHY in the name of all that is screwed do we have to rely on a bunch of freaking politicians too stupid to smell the shit for an organization that will do something inspite of the ignorant morons in government? Money? Hell, I'm sure there's someone with a dime or two that would help this out.
well, if they need that much money to do a better job at telling us what's going on, maybe a few more college environmental scientistists could anti up some time. Why do we cater to the PUGS?
"budget-neutral plan" may mean something else to you than it does to me.
Note they shorted NOAA's requested funding by over a $billion. Next they'll chop the Coast Guard because it services all those buoys that provide some of the data proving the reality of Global Warming. It would be much tidier if they would just put one of their guns to their head and pulled the trigger.
That is the entire budget for ALL of NOAA, which includes the the following:
http://www.noaa.gov/organizations.html
If all these vital functions were privatized by, say Accu-Weather. Their budget would be at least as large, and growing every year, and their gross fees - i.e. making citizens pay for formerly free weather information, river stage and flood information, tides and wave information etc, etc would be much larger yet.
Just look at our $2.5 trillion capitalist-run health care system for an example of what happens when a vital service or infrastructure is run by private corporations.
Why is government spending a few billion for vital public services, or research always "wasteful" but when corporations spend trillions on plastic crap that are threatening life on earth, it is applauded as "entrepreneurship" and "innovation"?
Check the bank accounts of the Denier Congressmen. Then you know who owns them. Act accordingly.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/climategate-2-0/
Take the Koch brothers cash and instantly - Climate Change disappears. What an evil lot....
I don't like either party , but on a scale of one to 10, the repugs are 1,000 in the hole and the dems are minus 10.
What honestly amazes me is anyone with at least two brain cells wired has a problem of understandng AGW is fact and if world governments don't get together and find a safe, reasonable method to reduce our carbon output by at least 50% and do it very, very soon, we will have runaway global warming anytime within the next three to ten years,, not just global warming and what we have in that respect already is very bad.
And the Koch Bros', Ceos of major oil, gas and coal corps, Anthony Watts, all of the professional GW deniers, Rush and some other TV newscasters, all Lobbyists, should be rounded up and banished to Antarctica.. They can dine on the Emperor Pengins who are dying because of global warming.
Somebody once told me that the 1% have a game they play. It is called, "He who dies with the most toys wins."
They don't seem to care about the fact that they have to be dead to win. It will be very interesting when they have the whole 100%. Then, they will fight amongst themselves to see who the final big winner is going to be.
I read an interview with one of the trillionaires. The interviewer asked him, "What about your children?"
His answer was, "F__k 'em. Let them get it the same way I did."
These bastards want it all and they will share with no one, including friends and family. Destroying the planet to add a couple of zeroes to their accounts means nothing to them.
It is called GREED, GREED, GREED!!!
There are no "trillionaires". The rest of your statement is equally likely bogus. Facts check, please, before engaging mouth.
Most of the government data is suspect anyway. One guy who collects radiation data in Hawaii claims Federal scientists showed up and harassed anyone who recorded a high reading, so he moved his observations to his house.
But EPA or NOAA air data, with expensive machines sniffing parts per billion in conformance of non-proliferation treaties are probably as subject to jury-rigging just like die bold voting machines are. So we're phucked any way you look at it.
The GOP is a bunch of dinosaurs who are bound and determined to make us all go extinct, imho. We ought to all start taking our own readings of everything and posting them independently like these guys:
http://blog.safecast.org/
On the bright side, at least it doesn't look like we're going to live long enough for humans to spread into space and destroy that also. Can you imagine Republicans mining the moon? Chit, we'd have daily rock shower and tsunamis on Earth the way they manage with insane things like "mountaintop removal".
What a suicidal lot they really are. Apparently, they want to kill their grandchildren. Nasty Reptiles.
TJ
~ Rights for the Environment ~
If we are honest with ourselves, I think we all know that the 'perfect storm' of technical problems now breaking on all our shores has a deeper cause.
It is a systemic problem, and simply put, it is human nature.
This is not so easily changed.
Governments run the world, for better or for worse, and that's part of human nature.
Even the United Nations is in fact a 'League of Nation-States' - in fact - of governments.
This has been the case ever since the climate ameliorated following the end of the last ice-age and we embarked upon the city and farming way of life. A well-organized and relatively wealthy city-state with roots in one place found that its own success required it to expand or become a steady-state economy.
If you look around, you already know which way was chosen.
Human nature - writ large - empire -
The entire global edifice is, I think, approaching collapse. If it does, another dark age may ensue.
Who wants that? And of what avail? So we can rise, Phoenix-like, and do it all over again?
Christopher Stone was onto something in 1972 when he published the legal argument for rights for the environment, titled "Should Trees Have Standing?"
And the Bolivians and Ecuadorians are onto something with their ideas for rights for 'Mother Earth', in fact, the same idea as Christopher Stone's.
Rights for the Environment is eminently doable, and would more or less instantly require large corporations, and governments, and people - to behave responsibly.
Isn't that what this is really all about, including the OCCUPY Movements - responsible behavior - and justice for an all-inclusive 'all' ?
Rights for the Environment, with an International Court of and for the Environment, would provide a mechanism and a means for rewriting the standard for a new global culture - one that is sustainable.
It would of course, like all else, be a work in progress, and subject to the same human nature spoken of earlier, and therefore imperfect.
But it might be a paradigm event - and allow us - and the environment - to live.
Manysummits
========
If the relatively recent discoveries of undersea and tundra releases of methane are accurate, we are toast regardless of efforts at this point to control human CO2 releases. ..............I'm not saying we don't need NOAA funding; quite the contrary. I'm saying that increasingly the science is saying we have passed the "tipping point." Perhaps that "fact" is what the powers that be don't want understood and planned for (not that DoD isn't planning for it...).
-30-
Why do some continue to deny advancement of knowledge? It is beyond me. I weep for my children.
In a sane world and perhaps even in some European countries, persons like Frank Wolf would be comitted to a mental health facility.